HOORAY!!

New Mexico, June 2007
I really like this picture of Aaron- it was just a coincidence that he happened to be wearing a Norsun Food Group sweatshirt at the time.

Today Aaron was finally made Quality Assurance Manager of Dickinson Frozen Foods' Fruitland plant. This has been a long time coming, but we're relieved that it's at last official. Here's an overview of how this has been building:

Back in December (I think), Aaron was told by some of the guys in corporate that they were planning on getting rid of the current QA manager at the Fruitland facility (corporate headquarters). At the time, though, she was on maternity leave and wouldn't be back until March, so they weren't sure how soon they could let her go once she got back. They gave him May/June as a tentative timeframe. In the meantime, however, they wanted Aaron to consider taking over the position. They discussed some terms and the biggest one, of course, was that we'd have to sell our house and move to the Boise area. We were concerned because we'd only been in the house about 6 months and weren't sure if it would be financially worthwhile to sell so soon. But we also knew that taking this offer would mean a substantial pay increase, that it was an important opportunity for him to move up in the company he'd been with for over 4 years, and would allow him to gain valuable experience much sooner than he'd anticipated. Time went by, he made a couple of visits (with us in tow) to see the area and tour the plant and in January they made him an official offer. He accepted. The offer was to make him Research and Development Manager to start, which would give him an immediate raise, as well as a moving bonus to help us get over here quicker. They also offered to pay for 3 months of rent, so we'd be able to put our house on the market and move at the same time without having to worry about 2 house payments... for a little while anyway. So that's what we did. February 1st we listed our house for sale and on March 1st we moved into a rental home in Caldwell, ID, about 30 minutes from Aaron's new job. Since then he's been running the R&D departments for both the Sugar City and Fruitland plants and secretly preparing to take over the QA job. Of course, it was supposed to be a secret all along, but quite a few people either heard about it or figured it out themselves, so I'm not sure how surprised people are actually going to be about this change. I think that they're all going to be pleased, though. Aaron is a popular guy among his co-workers and gets along well with pretty much everyone. He's been working really hard at his R&D and has made some major achievements during his time in that position. He really has become invaluable to the company, securing some important accounts, creating numerous new products and saving the company a ton of money on various projects. (Can you tell I'm proud? )

Anyway, Aaron will now be able to start doing the job he was brought here to do, which (he hopes) will be much less stressful than his previous one. They've yet to find him a replacement in R&D, so I just hope they don't try to get him to do both...